Unless you're my Great Uncle Gary, drafts are super fun. If you're a Minnesotan, or a fan of Minnesotan sport teams, drafts are both the most stressful and exciting time of that team's season.

Why? Because we mess them up 7 out of 10 times. Sports drafts mean a lot to Minnesotans; none of the marquee players want to come play here during free agency, so the only way our teams can acquire talent is via the draft and miraculous trades that maroon a player here for the remainder of their contract. There's no money in Minnesota compared to the coast teams, and that carries over into leagues that have strict salary caps like the NFL where players make the most money off of marketability.

Simply put, the market here isn't big enough for superstars. Kevin Love had like, one Taco Bell commercial. Karl-Anthony Towns got a Kit-Kat Bar deal. Kit-Kat. The second best center in the NBA gets a deal with a candy bar company while DeAndre Jordan's "If you locked me in a gym all night and told me I couldn't dunk I'd maybe score eight points" looking ass gets a Kia commercial because he's in Los Angeles.

However, most of the leagues have drafts that let Minnesotan teams pick the best of the best (or that they can get) without financial stipulations ruining a team's draft. Yes, the NBA and the NFL in particular have scaled rookie deals that can cost a lot, but at least every team in that league has to deal with that rule. Except for the MLB. The MLB, as we know, has no salary cap; teams can spend as much as they can afford, akin to how football leagues work in Europe. The "Evil Empire" Yankees were constructed this way, where no other team could afford to pay their superstars what the Yankees could. Since there is no outright guaranteed money a team can't spend as long as they have it, this means that teams have a set amount of money that they can spend in the draft, as opposed to being able to select the pick freely. This means that some teams will pass clear-cut best pick in the MLB draft so they can select more decent players latter in the draft, or at least collect a bigger haul of prospects later in the draft as opposed to spending it all on one player that may or may not be that great.

Because there's another thing about the MLB draft; it's a crapshoot.

As of now, there is only one player in the MLB hall of fame that was selected first overall, and that was Ken Griffey Jr. Bryce Harper will probably join that list, but that's twenty years down the road if he maintains his form. The best player in the draft in five years, when it actually matters, more than likely won't be the first choice off the board. Which makes sense; why should a team like the Twins spend all their money on one player when they could develop a stronger farm system by taking gambles on more players? The laws of probability should even it out, right?

Yes. Unless there are exceptions. And this draft was an exception with Hunter Greene.

Hunter Greene: 6'4. 170-something pounds. .324 batting average. 33 hits in 30 games. 28 RBIs. 6 HRs all the while playing the California Super League, notorious for being the toughest prep baseball league in America that has stacked rosters of drafted players and D1 talent.

So, a pretty good batter, but nothing we haven't seen before.

Then there's his pitching, which anyone who follows baseball should know by now:

,075 ERA. .182 OBA (vindictive of a stellar defense.) 43 strikeouts in 28 innings pitched. This is against, again, marginally pro-level talent. The kid can throw a triple digit fastball, hit three hundred-plus, and can do both in the same damn game? The Twins had the first overall pick of this draft, so surely we couldn't miss our chance at getting a mini-Dave Winfield, right? This could be the LeBron of baseball, and he could be coming to Minnesota. Hunter Greene wasn't just what the Twins needed, he is what baseball needed, an ethereal superstar in the making.

We drafted SS Royce Lewis instead. Royce-Fucking-Lewis. Playing in the same league, Lewis averaged a better batting average (.388) stole more bases (25) and hit two less home runs. Doesn't pitch. He had about ten less RBIs than Greene.

So, basically, we drafted a guy who was really good at getting singles and can run really fast instead of the best overall player in the draft. There is no confirmed reason because the player's agents are really damn good at hiding contract details before they are signed, but the accepted rhetoric from Twins' brass is that Greene, the top rated player in the draft with much more leverage in negotiations, would've taken too much of the supposed 14 million pool that the Twins allocated for the draft as opposed to Lewis, a fringe top five player in the draft, would've had in those same talks. We're talking millions. We passed on the most prolific prospect in baseball since Bryce Harper because the Twins wanted to save a couple million while Greene was in the farm instead of reworking their current roster to allocate more money to get Greene.

The irony, of course, is that the Twins used that remaining pool on players that are no way shape or form a grand slam like Greene, even if he doesn't reach his potential, save for Brent Rooker out of Mississippi State taken in the supplemental draft. Charlie Barnes and Blayne Enlow have nasty-ass command on their pitches, but compared to the level of what Greene could be we'll never know if those pitchers will be able to reach that level. Point being, every player has a good chance of flaming out in the minors and never be seen on a 40 man roster. Greene has a less of a chance of flaming out, either as a hitter or as a pitcher, so why do the Twins waste money on picks that have less of a chance of being great than spending on Greene right now when he will be at his cheapest? Think about it; If Greene, or if any of those prospects pan out, they will be more expensive to retain anyway. So why not get Greene now, then if he becomes too expensive when he hits the majors, just trade him to a team that can afford him for a massive haul.

Because these are the Twins. We'd rather overpay Minnesotan natives like Joe Mauer, Kent Hrbek and Jack Morris so fans will be nostalgic rather than spend a few extra million on the most surefire draft pick since Bryce Harper. Royce Lewis will be the perfect Twin; athletic, has upside that won't develop in time during his rookie contract, and will be picked up by the Yankees because he couldn't learn to hit with the Twins. We have one of the worst rotational bullpens in the MLB, you don't think that a guy who can sling a triple digit fastball at seventeen years old would at least help in that regard?

So no, I wasn't surprised that we passed on Greene; he would be too much of a luxury that Minnesota doesn't deserve. We deserve players like Royce Lewis, this team is full of guys like Royce Lewis. Cheap, expendable, and a dime-a-dozen in a league where the brass needs to spend a little more sometimes to beat the bigger markets.